Garden of Gethsemane
by AbaddonNox
Summary: Anderson gives Maxwell last rites while London crumbles into Armageddon around them. What was our Judas priest thinking while he prayed in this newly created tenth circle of hell? How did he arrive at the decision to cast down his thirty pieces of silver?


Disclaimer: I do not own any aspect of Hellsing, that honor belongs to the great Kohta Hirano.  
Spoilers: To be safe, all of the manga up through episode 73 (somewhere in volume 9).  
A/N: This a mangaverse story that takes place in episode 62 (volume 8, chapter 4), after the third page (the title one) and ending in the fourth. Please forgive me for leaving out Anderson's Dark Horse-style accent, but I cannot even hope to write that way (frankly, I can barely read it). I could try to legitimize this choice but I will not even try. I also appear to have accumulated copious endnotes for a piece this short. Ignore them if you like, needing so many stinks of my weaknesses as a writer.

* * *

**Garden of Gethsemane**

Father Alexander Anderson frowned blankly at his right hand. After pulling off the glove he had absently wiped the sweaty skin on his pants, then cassock, only to have it come back both times wet and sticky with blood in various states of congealing. Anderson stared briefly at his sullied fingers, then reached beneath the clerical jacket to rub them firmly in some shielded cloth near his left shoulder. He gave the thumb a passing glance before using it to plug an open vial of blessed oil, and with a deft twist of the hand deposited some of the amber liquid onto his skin.

"Through this holy anointing may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit."

Anderson spoke the necessary words softly and smeared a cross of oil with purposeful slowness onto the brow of the head resting on his right thigh. Archiepiscopus Enrico Maxwell's skin was still deceptively warm, but the dull eyes that stared up at Anderson told a different story (1). The lids did flutter occasionally, but the priest was a de facto expert on death and saw these movements for what they were. He thought that the muscle of Maxwell's heart might still be stubbornly attempting to beat, or maybe just quivering at this point, against the wood violating it. Obviously some neurons were still firing, but the intense trauma and shock had already taken consciousness. The flux of blood was slackening to an ooze. Considering the volume already lost this was hardly surprising, but in all likelihood there were cells just now discovering that something had gone horribly wrong and their days were numbered.

The priest had determined years ago that the human form was a system with only one drive – survival. There is no such thing as a "peaceful" departure from this world. Even if the soul accepts the fate of its earthly shell the body is still a base animal clinging to the only existence it will ever know. The newly deceased could moan or sigh with escaping air, limbs might twitch, and eyes even appear to respond to changes in light or movement, but that did not make the person any less dead. The body was a very sore loser and continued to fight long after it would have been more honorable to simply concede. The stakes are admittedly high, but why agonizingly cling to this flawed world when one full of eternal bliss is so close? A case could be made for those heading in the opposite direction, but in Anderson's experience, whether saint or monster, they all left this world kicking and screaming.

Anderson reached for Maxwell's arms, ignoring the grisly stakes poking skyward through the archbishop's chest, and removed bloodied gloves so he could trace more oil crosses on the backs of both hands.

"May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up."

How many fellow priests had he given this sacrament too? Caught in the stormy cycle of death which he caused, invited, and just seemed to wade into, Anderson had anointed the palms of the unordained more times than he could count. But he had also done the same to the backs of more hands than he cared to remember (2). As a living weapon the paladin had accepted it as his cross to bear, as well as a privilege, to attend the last earthly moments of more than his fare share of fellow humans. So why was this time different? Why did it feel almost wrong?

Severed nerves – major ones like those in a limb or even the spinal cord itself – that is what Anderson would have said the "wrongness" resonated with, if he had tried to put the sensation to words, and been asked to share them. It was deeply unsettling when flesh slid into nothingness, like part of you was falling, and there was no mistaking that something important was slipping away. Shock was something Anderson was familiar with; a wave of it always flushed through his system with a bad injury. Yet he wasn't hurt, and the bodily reactions were more like an afterthought than the real thing. If there had actually been a serious wound his heart would have at least fluttered briefly, it always did. But instead the muscle was beating steadily in what could only be likened to a rip in time. Seconds always froze into minutes while Anderson's body rushed to come to terms with nerve trauma, regenerating and then relearning how to use his own flesh as if it were a third arm. The reacquired tissue never quite felt the same though. It wasn't necessarily a bad difference; the new often worked better than what it replaced. But there was no returning exactly what had been, just as there is no undoing something once it is done.

Anderson had stepped over a line that there was no crossing back over from. It was not an action that he regretted as much as wished it had not been necessary to begin with. Maybe things could have followed another path if he had stood up to the archbishop sooner, offered counsel which Anderson never thought it was his place to give, or been firmer back at the orphanage with a young boy named Enrico. Maxwell had turned into something twisted and ugly, but all Anderson could see was a hurt child with old wounds festered beyond hope. It should have never gotten this far. A guardian needed to protect their charge, even from themselves. Thus the responsibility of fatally rectifying that failure had fallen on Anderson and no one else. It needed to be done, and he had to be the one to do it, so why did it still feel wrong?

Maybe it was because he could remember a youthful Enrico with a mind and faith sharper than his years. Or, that Maxwell was the priest's superior in the God-sanctioned hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. Or, that the archbishop had yelled for Anderson as the river of vile undead engulfed his mobile command station. Or maybe, it was really because Archiepiscopus Enrico Maxwell had not been yelling for assistance but screaming in accusation, proclaiming to all who would listen the name of his betrayer.

"Away with you, Satan!" (3) Anderson growled softly to himself. Doubts that roused guilt and spiraled out of control were dangerous and reeked of the devil. It was not his place to question. As as member of the Vatican's Section XIII he was nothing more than an instrument of God's justice, just as bayonets were brainless steel extensions of his own will. Archbishop Enrico Maxwell had forgotten his place and paid the price. That the Iscariot Agency's secret weapon had meted out divine punishment on its own leader was the burden of belonging to a division code-named "Judas". But fulfilling your place as a righteous agent of the Lord did not pardon you from heavenly justice, just as accomplishing his destiny had not saved the traitorous apostle from a miserable end.

Anderson knew a noose was tightening around his own neck. In the battle against wickedness the Almighty wielded souls as Anderson did his blades, and the paladin often lost count of how many bayonets he sent soaring in just a single fight. Of course devote humans were not as disposable as his own man-made weapons, but their bodies were, and then the spirits were free to return to God's bosom. Any weapon, even a living trump card, was dispensable. Anderson's mind briefly flittered toward what form his betrayer would take, but he quickly squelched those thoughts. That was for the Lord to know. Anderson would march to his appointed doom with the same dedicated gusto he took into battle. It was the Iscariot way.

But for now it was his duty to watch as the last bits of life drained away from Maxwell's body. The paladin was there to guard against the evil swarming around them, as well as make sure the archbishop didn't become one of the undead. He glanced down at the face on his lap. Anderson straightened some of the hair wicking gore onto his pants and touched a pale cheek. It was still warm, but the priest knew that the reality of death was settling in. Anderson pulled the hand away and lifted his gaze.

The numbness from psychosomatic nervous damage apparently wasn't hazy, but painfully clear, so with crystalline detachment he surveyed a war zone. An ominous sky, choked with smoke and torn with bouts of flame, was a murky sea where zeppelins slid by as leviathans, the remaining ninth crusade helicopters glowed like drowning angels, and the ethereal arms of Alucard's necropolis licked up from the depths. No, not Alucard – Dracula. The legend was reemerging as "no life king" over unfurled legions; flanks he had been forced to devour into himself during his domestication. But to the watching priest an abomination like that could never be tamed, and presuming otherwise was to encroach dangerously into God's dominion. Only the Almighty and His chosen agents could truly keep evil at bay, and then only by vanquishing it. The Hellsing woman was respectably brave, but did she actually think she could control a demon? If so, she was as much a fool as Maxwell had been.

The protestant had only to glance around her and see that she had made a deal with the devil – literally. London was being raped into Armageddon, razed to rubble mixed with corpses and a liberal seasoning of gore. The land was crawling with the undead citizens of Alucard's body, and the evil was so thick you could not only see the oily swells of darkness, but smell its acrid stench. Many of the corpses, human and monster alike, had become morbid decorations atop grand spikes courtesy of Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingate Hellsing's favorite pet.

"The beast you have seen was once alive and is alive no longer (4)," Anderson whispered, "and the beast will turn against the prostitute (5)."

A wild animal could never be tamed, only the time before it bit the hand that fed it delayed. With arrogance the whore of Babylon had not even realized the treachery. The beast was bowing to her, showing mock allegiance, but how could Integra Hellsing still think she was in control? Even ignoring the sights around her, there was no avoiding the fact that the monster was now free. The beast was rising from its prison, and even a faithful pet rarely heeled when it tasted freedom.

Maybe that is what those Millennium nazis had wanted from the beginning, and the stupid protestants had all but handed it to them, with Maxwell dragging the Church in to help. There were others like the archbishop, Anderson could see that now; men of God sick on power and greed, rotting the holy Roman Catholic Church from within. The seven hills of Rome, with the Vatican, had turned into another Babylon (6). In time there would be a cleansing, but now the imperative was protection. For the Faith and those in its care, like his orphaned children, the beast needed to be kept at bay.

"The beast you have seen was once alive and is alive no longer; it is yet to come up from the Abyss, but only to go to its destruction (7)," Anderson murmured. The vampire's fate was sealed. "I saw heaven open, and a white horse appear; its rider was called Trustworthy and True; in uprightness he judges and makes war. His eyes were flames of fire ... his cloak was soaked in blood. He is known by the name, The Word of God (8)."

Anderson knew the fires of the Holy Spirit were lapping at his soul. The touch was stoking his well-maintained hearth of faith into a bonfire, leaving his fingers twitching for bayonets and skin itching with preemptive regeneration. He felt divine destiny solidify and tighten like the invisible noose cinching beneath his chin. Anderson brought a hand to his neck and deftly cracked it with a jerk of the head. It was time to throw down his thirty pieces of silver. He touched Maxwell's cheek again. It still held some heat, but the body had settled into a stillness wreathed in clotting blood. Anderson pulled his hand away and began to re-equip soiled gloves. If the fluid pulsing through his veins was soul currency, then the blood money belonged only to God. When the Almighty asked for it back, so be it.

"Even were I to walk in a ravine as dark as death I should fear no danger, for you are at my side. Your staff and your crook are there to soothe me. You prepare a table for me under the eyes of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup brims over. Kindness and faithful love pursue me every day of my life. I make my home in the house of the Lord for all time to come (9). Amen."

"Goodbye Maxwell," Anderson concluded softly. "Perhaps we will meet again soon."

He slipped out from underneath the head on his thigh after closing Maxwell's blank eyes. Anderson slid into a crouch next to the corpse and plunged two bayonets into its chest, neatly clustering them to pierce heart tissue the wooden spikes might have missed. A second swift movement saw Maxwell's head cleanly lopped off. A blessed writ, pinned to the body by one of the newly placed blades, flapped listlessly in the beheading blow's wake. It was perhaps excessive, but offered some protection and completely sealed out the possibility of Maxwell being mired to this world as one of the undead.

The vigil over, Anderson's attention tunneled towards the coming combat. He reached beneath his jacket and pulled out a crisp bible. Anderson knew he had been born, created, and groomed for this. He was a honed and willing blade for striking a blow against the mighty beast. A devoted instrument of divine punishment set to vanquish a demon and spill blood rancid with wickedness, as well as a living weapon prepared to spill its own. Anderson was a holy knight riding into battle on a white horse of heavenly retribution, eyes aflame with resolve, cassock already muddied with the blood of monsters and heathens. He would hurl the great Dracula into a burning lake of brimstone as prophesy decreed, or die trying. Anderson slipped a hand to his side, verifying that an object nestled safely in his clothing was still secure – and death, of course, had many forms.

Was it possible to be your own betrayer? Anderson's lips curled into a knowing smirk as he reverently clutched the bundle, and indirectly the holy nail within. The ways of the Lord were indeed mysterious and beautiful. Members of Iscariot shoulder many sins as means to ordained ends; they fully expect their last earthly moments to be sinful, but for that to be trumped by a final mortal act of providential self-betrayal could only be seen as a divine blessing. He was on the right path.

Anderson returned his attention to the bible, thumbing the thin leaves gently. The fire raging in the paladin's bones bit deeper and threatened to consume all his faculties as he reached out mentally to the loosening pages. Berserker malevolence, and an intense desire to mete out frenzied destruction, mixed easily and naturally into the conflagration. Healing abilities flexed in a bath of adrenaline, leaving a backwash of painfully tingling skin and spiked metabolism. In response the internal bonfire flared even hotter, sending the bible leaves snapping wildly against their bindings. Under this violent supernatural fever every cell in Anderson's flesh screamed deliriously for action. He would destroy Alucard. If that meant jumping willingly into the gallows trapdoor Anderson would leap with a laughing prayer and smile as the rope jerked tight.

The priest fingered a communications unit and attempted to assert some level of control over his body. It was time to contact the remaining ninth crusade forces and Anderson needed lucidity.

He was going to toss the vampire's treasure of hoarded soul currency into the temple of God like Judas silver, and the meager blood money from his own veins would most likely be the fee.

Father Alexander Anderson considered that a fair price.

* * *

A/N: Thank you for getting this far in my piece. If you have a second please leave a review, any and all feedback is greatly appreciated :) 

**NOTES**

1 - I tried my best to depict last rites (really only the Anointing of the Sick in this piece) in a semi-combat situation, but I know I got it wrong. I have a feeling the oil might be left out in a true battle scenario, and I skipped over blessings/prayers that I could not locate the text for. Also, this sacrament is not supposed to be given to the dead, even though I found inauthoritative sources that said the ritual could be performed a short time after death. But hey, it was the "seed" for this story, so I kept it.

2 - For lay people the oil is placed on the palms during the Anointing of the Sick. However, clergy are anointed on the backs of their hands, since it was placed on their palms when they were ordained.

3 - Matthew 4:10. I could not seem to pinpoint which translation Anderson uses in the manga. Therefore, I chose one of my favorites, "The New Jerusalem Bible" (J. R. R. Tolkien was a contributor so it has to be good :P). Anyway, considering how crazy Anderson is he might have memorized more than one translation.

4 - Revelations 17:8

5 - Revelations 17:16. Anderson has called Integra "Babylon" before (Hellsing volume 1, page 162), so I am not pulling this out of thin air (it might only be in the english translation but I am going to go with it anyway).

6 - Revelations 17:9. I think that Anderson also sees Rome (specifically the Vatican) as "Babylon". This is a common interpretation and would explain why he tries to send the rest of the ninth crusade forces there instead of leaving them with him as "the armies of heaven" that follow the referenced "rider" (see note 8).

7 - Revelations 17:8 again.

8 - Revelations 19:11-13. I do not presume that Anderson would ever think he was Jesus Christ, if you want to take that interpretation of this passage. Revelations has as many meanings as people who read it. Anderson, being our favorite crazed fanatic, would surely pull the interpretations he wanted and as many as he desired.

9 - Psalms 23:4-6. I replaced the translation's "Yahweh" with "the Lord" since I thought it sounded better.


End file.
